Has The Megaupload Shutdown Been Good For The Entertainment Industry?

from the thoughts? dept

One of our most vocal (yet anonymous) critics posted an off-topic comment on a totally unrelated story mocking us for not having covered the story of how Hollywood has been saved (saved!) thanks to the shutdown of Megaupload. Of course, the reason we hadn't covered the story was because we didn't know about it. He referenced a couple of French news reports, which I hadn't seen until I had some time just now to catch up on some old comments. He could have submitted the stories, but he insisted that it would be a total waste of time because we ignore any story that we disagree with. That's pretty funny, considering many, many of the stories here are ones that challenge our views. And, I'm especially interested in reports of actual data, even if it conflicts with other data we've seen in the past. In fact, I'm especially interested in such stories, because my focus is figuring out what's really happening and understanding what's actually best for culture and society. So data that actually challenges my assumptions is some of the most useful data around.

Unfortunately, the stories don't actually have any data. The first one is totally anecdotal, concerning a guy who now goes to the movie rental store to rent (physical) movies since the shutdown of Megaupload, and the second one is about claims from TV stations that their websites are getting more traffic since the shutdown of Megaupload. Both are anecdotal, not data based, and really just seem to scream out the obvious: man, does the entertainment industry do a horrible job giving consumers what they want. If Megaupload's website was offering a better experience than the TV networks' own offerings... they should be firing their web designers and starting again. As for the guy renting videos... we'll see how long that lasts.

The same commenter then left a comment with some bullet point claims. He doesn't source them, so I have no idea how accurate they are, but they seem to indicate the same point in that second article. In the few weeks after Megaupload got shut down, TV station websites got more traffic. Again, this seems to simply show how bad a job they must have been doing in the past to attract viewers to their own websites. It also means that as soon as something better comes along (and it will), people will split. Ignoring that the market is telling you something is no way to build a long-term business.

Of course, we've also seen significant other data from firms that have access to a much wider view of internet traffic, which suggested that Megaupload traffic pretty quickly shifted to other, similar sites. Of course, some of those sites have since shut down or changed models, but anyone who thinks that more such sites aren't springing up (with some keeping a lower profile) simply hasn't been paying much attention to how the internet works.

Did enormous damage without helping Hollywood.

Consider the still-infant cloud storage industry.

It's been conclusively demonstrated that the government can seize and destroy your data on nothing more than an accusation that some party or parties unknown, with whom you have no accusation, have been using the service to "infringe." You can be cut off from your backups, records (in the data/information/paperwork sense), without so much as a warrant against YOU, and that data will be destroyed even before any trial, if there ever is one.

Unfortunately, the stories don't actually have any data. The first one is totally anecdotal, concerning a guy who now goes to the movie rental store to rent (physical) movies since the shutdown of Megaupload,

You mention the anecdotal evidence of a single video shop owner but ignore the information given by an online rental business serving that market, that presumable has much broader and significant evidence.

OK, how about this one for a size: it's a story about one guy (me) who after Megaupload shutdown DID NOT visit ANY TV station's website. Nor that I was visiting them before. That should qualify for an evidence (of whatever), doesn't it? What I did though, I changed from Megaupload to totally another file sharing site.

I wonder what the defenders of site seizures are going to say now with this "statistics"?

The Really Important Measure of the MegaUpload Shutdown

The one and only really important measure of the MegaUpload shutdown (well and all of the "Major Blow to Piracy" shutdowns) will be that 100%, 200%, 300% increase in the top line revenues of all of the major studios (well after the vigorish to the collection agencies). Now that all of that pirating is gone, the logical conclusion is that there will be a HUGE uplift in the revenue to the old-line studios. Wal-Mart and the gangs should see a huge uplift in sales, NetFlix and Blockbuster should be solvent again now. The whole entertainment industry will be better off. Now, even theater revenues should be up by a couple of hundred percent. Please, let me know when this starts happening. If I believed that even a 5% lift was going to be visible, I would be out buying stock in those companies like crazy. However; I believe that even if there were some lift in the top line revenue, the senior management would just make it go away with bonuses for themselves anyway. In reality, I would be willing to bet my $1.00 (movie reference here) that there will not be any noticeable lift in revenue for any of the studios that can be attributed to the MegaUpload shutdown or any other anti-piracy campaign that have mounted.

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A 5% increase in traffic isn't really statistically significant. Many sites see a lot of up- and down-swings to the tune of up to 10% on a regular basis. Merely saying they had an increase of about 5% (and it doesn't say of what) doesn't mean much.

Re: The Really Important Measure of the MegaUpload Shutdown

I would agree. If they could watch the shows freely and instantly via streaming on the official site or download them from megaupload and they chose to download there is probably plenty of work to be done on those network sites. These people will use the network site until they find a better alternative legitimate or otherwise, because there is a reason they were not using it in the first place and chose a different, less safe and slower service.

Re: Did enormous damage without helping Hollywood.

I now have a new conspiracy theory. Some company was using Megaupload to share their financial data with all of their accountants and all of it was cooked. The SEC started looking into the company, and so the company got DOJ/ICE to shutdown Megaupload so that all of their data disappeared. Now I only need a company everyone hates but knows that DOJ/ICE would bow to them to finish off my conspiracy masterpiece. I don't know if I should choose Goldman Sachs, AT&T, or the [RI|MP]AA.

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I tend to avoid the network sites to watch their shows because they usually require you to download some special plugin to make it work and create an account, and frequently have only two or three of the latest episodes up, if they have the latest, sometimes it's two or three episodes from 2+ months ago.

Challenging your views?

"That's pretty funny, considering many, many of the stories here are ones that challenge our views."

By challenging, I guess you mean challenging them from an even more extreme end of the spectrum. As it, "We normally think piracy is just great but this new study shows that it's totally cool as well."

Seriously. Point us to more than two stories that suggest that pirates should actually be punished and you've been wrong in the past. Usually when you do this, you do it in a odd way as you did with paywalls. You used to hate them when the NY Times tried them, but once Kevin Smith and Louis CK embraced them you started claiming that paywalls were some of the new business models that you keep claiming are coming any day now.

Re: Challenging your views?

" You used to hate them when the NY Times tried them, but once Kevin Smith and Louis CK embraced them you started claiming that paywalls were some of the new business models that you keep claiming are coming any day now."

I guess it's a little hard to tell, but there is plenty to look at here:

First off, Mega itself - something like 50 million page views a day, down the toilet. That in itself is a major shift.

Second, the repercussion shut downs, as various file lockers and torrent site operators decided to just close down, or to severely limit their service to block all file sharing activities.

Third, you have the shut down of many of the "pay to upload" and "pay for traffic" affiliate programs related to these file locker sites.

Finally, you have the knock on effects of tens of thousands (if not millions) of forum links to pirated material suddenly going dead, and many of these sites losing their income sources as a result of the third item above.

Does it "help" the entertainment business? Clearly any time legal action results in a significant change to the landscape, there will be people who reconsider the pirating option. Anyone using a piracy forum right now to source content is probably very pissed off, unable to find files. If you are in the US, you are doubly screwed, often unable to access the file locker sites at all.

The help isn't short term (sorry Mike, no black and white answer), but perhaps more of a long term thing. Certainly, it has knocked the shit out of the file locker business, and sent many piracy supporting ass clowns back into mom's basement, crying because the big bad gubbermint took away their toys.

Re: Challenging your views?

I'm just going to get this out of the way, as pointless and a waste of time as it is nonetheless...

bob "paywall" DOES NOT mean what YOU think it means.

Kevin Smith/Louis CK's "paywalls" ARE NOT "paywalls" in the same manner as the NY Times paywall was/is.

In fact, they're not even paywalls. At all.

You seem to think that having to pay for something automatically makes it a paywall. The word "stupid moron" springs rapidly to mind when I see your "definition" of a paywall (although you don't state the definition as such, it's readily inferred based on your use of the word and the "examples" you give to prove yourself correct).

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What middle man? Artist can finance their own movie today using services like Kickstarter. The question is why aren't they flocking to Kickstarter. If Kickstarter offers a more lucrative, and easier path we should see hundreds of big production movies coming from there. Where are these productions? Where are the fil producers, why are they still using the movie studios to finance their movies? The answer is simple the studios DO actually contribute a great deal to these productions, beyond fronting the money for securing the rights to the screen play, paying the production crew, and utilizing their established distribution network, they also promote the film. There are thousands of independent films produced each year, but how many of them do you actually hear about? How many of them will be seen by more than a few thousand people at best? How many of them will only be seen by immediate family members and friends of the people who produced them? Like it or not the studios do contribute a great deal to the films they finance.

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Pissed off? Unable to find files?

Do you even know how the internet works?

It routes AROUND damage. So these "pissed off" people you seem to claim are out there, were probably pissed off for like, I dunno, 24 to 48 hours, and then they A) found everything they wanted when it got uploaded somewhere else B) they found a torrent of it or C) they moved on to something else. And since you mentioned it was a forum, I bet most of the dead links got responses that listed where the content can be found on other services that aren't mega.

Haha. I just have to laugh. Here you are using the internet to post but you don't realize this exact system is why most people aren't having any of he reactions you claim them to be having.

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Sorry dude, the long term is the loosening of the monopoly control and recapture of the commons by the public, where you and your pals will be out of a job.

Besides haven't you people learned anything?
You shutdown Napster people moved on, you shutdown Grokster people moved on and year after year after year piracy keeps going up not down, just like the reveneues from the entertainment industry.

If you people were serious you would sue each and every user who download something that will teach them to have self-control. But that is not what you people want, you want the sheep to be dumb and impulsive, because if they stopped to think about it and had any self control they wouldn't waste money at all on you people ever, because it brings nothing to their lifes.

Re: Re: Challenging your views?

Dictionary definition of "paywall"

pay·wall [pey-wawl]
noun
1. a system in which access to all or part of a Web site is restricted to paid subscribers: Some newspapers have put their content behind a paywall.
2. the part of a Web site that can be accessed only by paid subscribers.

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"Does it "help" the entertainment business? Clearly any time legal action results in a significant change to the landscape, there will be people who reconsider the pirating option. Anyone using a piracy forum right now to source content is probably very pissed off, unable to find files. If you are in the US, you are doubly screwed, often unable to access the file locker sites at all."

Eh, most major piracy forums just started rebuilding, went to private tracking, jumped into direct connections hubs (private or public) etc...etc...etc... At least most the ones I've seen have.

Which really is just a better form of service, and helps to diversify the methods of getting the content. Hell there were actually even some piracy forums that got entire userbases invited to other forums that used methods other than cyberlockers in order to get the content back out there ASAP. You can't stop the signal man.

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Right, which is why piracy collapsed when Napster went down, I mean limewire, I mean ninjavideo, I mean megaupload. Yup this is the nail that finally gets it, even without the industry offering what people obviously want no other site or method for sharing will pop up in a couple weeks/months.

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Of course they are. This is like busting on drug dealing outfit - you just end up with others springing up.

Worst part is, I was trying to download some MODS for a game that recently put out a new expansion pack. Sadly, most of the mods were on MegaUpload. Since I didn't have the money to get the expansion just yet, I was going to add some MODS to my existing install to see if I would 'get into' the game again with some new spice in it.

I ended up just forgetting about it and started up another game.

So EA will lose me buying the next expansion for the game, but then I started getting into another game... and was planning on buying the newest version tonight.

As for movies - free or not free, I'm not paying $20 for a new movie on DVD, sorry. I am patient, I can wait for it to turn up used, or just watch more of the on-demand I already pay for.

But we get back to the CORE portion of all of this:

How many movies/music have you bought *WITHOUT* hearing or seeing it for free first? Sure maybe some you'll buy after going to the Cinema - I bought Avatar. And Avatar is the only new movie I've bought in 7 years or so due to prices - and it was a gift, lol.

But for Christmas this year, I bought loads of used DVD's for $1.00 each and gifted those out. I even commented that they are used, but I could get them 20 times more movies - everyone actually seemed to appreciate that, and asked me where I got them for a dollar at...

Out of the movies I've bought over the last two months - used - I've seen them all before, just wanted a copy.

Music - I almost never buy without hearing it first... on the radio, pandora, etc - FOR FREE.

It routes AROUND damage. So these "pissed off" people you seem to claim are out there, were probably pissed off for like, I dunno, 24 to 48 hours, and then they A) found everything they wanted when it got uploaded somewhere else B) they found a torrent of it or C) they moved on to something else. And since you mentioned it was a forum, I bet most of the dead links got responses that listed where the content can be found on other services that aren't mega.

I suspect the only content you won't be able to find now is older legal stuff.

Illegal stuff will end up posted elsewhere, but there were many game MODS, documents, and custom created content on Megaupload. To be honest, I wasn't even aware there was pirated crap there, until I heard all this news, but then I'm not in the 'piracy scene'.

I'm just a legit customer who's usually pissed off at the gouging the "entertainment" industry tries on the consumer.

Thank gosh for on-demand and libraries. I'm not opposed to paying a *FAIR* price, but the prices aren't fair.

How is it fair to charge $15.00 for a digital download of 15 songs? What 'cost' is incurred in this? 20,000 a year to maintain the server hosting it, if that?

If the RIAA had *any clue* of how much music I DID NOT buy due to the pricing I bet they'd be amazed.

$15.00 probably don't seem like much to the money-mongers at the RIAA and really it isn't much - in a relative sense.. Until you think of how easy it is to duplicate digital music - then you realize... it's a rip-off.

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The answer is simple the studios DO actually contribute a great deal to these productions, beyond fronting the money for securing the rights to the screen play, paying the production crew, and utilizing their established distribution network, they also promote the film.

Or maybe the simple answer is that those film directors, once they make the money, send out the prizes and all, are busy making their movies without the MPAA being involved.

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Nope, I don't get out much. I spend most my time online on the exact sort of private links sites we're discussing, which is why I know that after megaupload went down a great deal of sites that incentivize uploading of popular content by their users (most of them invite only cites) made a huge push to switch their content over to places such as multiupload or mediafire (often by offering increased rewards for reuploading items). Meanwhile they setup, as I said before but you ignored, direct swap methods for files such as DC++ hubs, temporary private trackers, or teamed up with existing private trackers to get the bits flowing again. Hell for new users of these sites its the best time ever, they can re-upload all the files they downloaded and get credits for it.

They took down megaupload, but what was that? 1 site, where a bunch of files were stored. People downloaded those files. So they can and are re-uploading them.

This is the problem with the approach to piracy thus far. You can't sue everyone who's uploading and downloading, it's been tried and it doesn't work. So you move to the sites. Well if you're suing them then we'll just keep uploading and move to other sites, or setup direct peer to peer methods. So you try and shut it down completely and we switch to encrypting everything or sneaker net. Megaupload only inconvenienced those who had someone else show them what to do to get their music. Now those people are asking their friends what to do now, and they're being told oh, just do X. It'll take a month or two tops to get the content back up that's missing.

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Knowing about biases and other possible flaws in studies can hurt people. Yes, it's possible that the study was just one of those things, but the possibility doesn't mean you're allowed to dismiss it entirely.

Re: The Really Important Measure of the MegaUpload Shutdown

Well, i can safely say, that i can go without their content, i will not help support the actions of these cronies

When they say profits have decreased, dont blame piracy, blame yourselfs, for attacking something through ignorance

Internet has built many little cyber societies if you will, which you neither respect nor acknowledge, dont expect us to be meek about it, the writting is on the wall.
If you want to break then mould the internet with our blessing, you'll have to make laws against things the internet users dont want abused, like privacy and such, even then, the less you break, the better.

And while you're at it, laws against politicl corruption and lobbyism, and reform of the copyright and the patent systems, thaaaaanks, that'll be peachy fellas

We know nothing about the age, or income of those polled. Let alone how much they spent before v how much they spend now, meaning the people who answered they stopped all spending might have only bought an album a year while those that say they buy more could by 100 albums a year. I think there is little factual data you can get from this poll. Which does not mean I wouldn't like to see a lot more studies in this vain.

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Kind of, but the big studios aren't in it for the creation of art: they'r ein it for the money. Kickstarter is not the way for everyone, and the studios could adapt to that and transition from gatekeepers to enablers with a few minor modifications: they have the finances to do it that way.

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There's another difference between what you can get on torrent sites and what you can get on French sites - movies are dubbed in France, so if you want to see the original content, the only place you can get it is on torrent sites. I'd really rather hear Robert de Niro's voice than some French actor I've never heard about. Not to mention how much is lost in translation. Why do they dub movies in France? Because the actor's union demanded it - and then they wonder why French people don't learn any foreign languages.

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Yes the article concerning the TV networking site is the third link in the post under "new report" (its the blue letters).

This article, in french, does not site any sources for any of its data except for a claim that the number of Video on Demands ordered from Canal+ (company?) went up by 20%. The link they give is to lefigaro.fr, which gets this info from a tweet from the "director of the film within the Canal+ group" (second link "20% increase, blue letters) that goes google translated like this "Megamachin closing, the Vod CANALPLAY took 20% in 7d. I await confirmation of final figures. Yalla!" Notice that he is "AWAITING FINAL FIGURES". So, if you'll actaully take the time to research what your talking about before you spout out random data, maybe you won't make such a fool of your self next time.

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Yes, see, that would've been a much better rebuttal to start than just appealing to random sampling error. Because now, if the troll was paying attention, it has something that it can use to dismiss any and all polls it doesn't like.

a guy who now goes to the movie rental store to rent (physical) movies since the shutdown of Megaupload

What a horrible thought. Going from having every movie ever made at your fingertips 24/7, to having to trudge all the way to some antiquated brick & mortar store and paw through the remake sequels in the hopes of finding something halfway decent.

I hope this guy has a friend who can teach him how to use torrents. (Anyone who'd consider a Blockbuster-equivalent to be a valid source of movies probably needs help configuring their router.)

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"insist on getting it illegally" my ass!

Did I ever said anything about "illegal" anything? Stop judging the people by yourself, man! Grow up.

I don't go there for anything that any TV station can provide. (BTW, that's the reason I never go to any TV station's website 8^)) If you look around you there are plenty of LEGAL files in this world that are getting shared through the sites like Megaupload.

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Alright then. The experiment was a success! Now I know what "they" are going to say. Looking at the AC's comment they are obviously going to twist my words to mean that I am an infringer, a pirate, a freetard, and a scumbag. Although there was no mention about infringing, pirating or getting anything illegally, or content for free...

I never used MegaUpload, however used to use FileServe and FileUpload like a mofo every single day! After the MU fiasco, fileserve and fileupload closing down major portions of their services... well, my torrent usage has gone up 146%! I have hard data to prove it too!

Re: Re: Re: Did enormous damage without helping Hollywood.

Response to: Anonymous Coward on Feb 29th, 2012 @ 11:08am

I think file sharing can be a good but you have a point, especially with the forum thing.

For the record I think it can be a good thing because I believe we live in the age of communication and freedom of communication increases education which increases. That increases innovation as long as people are willing to innovate. If people are not willing it causes problems. I ask then, do you want better stuff?

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Kickstarter does work but you do have to do some promoting yourself. So what? Get off your, or rather get on your lazy ass, and get posting on youtube then spread the link. Hire someone to make posters and spread them around. Tweet and facebook about it, use a photo of the poster to go with it.